Monday, April 22, 2013

Well first I have to say that I don't have a lot of time but I will try to
report everything as best as I can.

We had a pretty good week this week. On P-day last week, we were walking
down the pedestrian zone with the other Elders here in Gera and some guys threw
a couple pebbles at us and we went over and talked to them and ended up teaching
them about the Restoration of the gospel. The guy who seemed to have the most
potential lives in Hessen though and was just there to take a test, so we gave
him a Book of Mormon and invited him to get in contact with the missionaries in
Hessen. We met with Schwester Doerlitz on Tuesday, and afterwards in the evening
we had our weekly ward activity at the church.

On Wednesday, we finally had a
chance to meet with Lukas Granse, the YSA we met a couple weeks ago who is
religious and works with this activity for religious youth. He invited us to go
to one of the activities, which is on May 4th, and he said there will be around
50 people there betwen the ages of 10 and 30, so I hope great things come out of
that. Lukas' concerns mostly had to do with having prophets and authority, and
he thinks that whatever we do on this earth, we will eventually live with
Christ. So that is something we are going to be focused on with him next time we
meet him. We then went by on Herr Hundt, a man we had taught a first lesson to
at his car dealership. We asked the employees there where he was and they said
that he doesn't work there anymore, so he either got fired or quit within the
last seven days, which was kind of annoying. We later on had a cool lesson on the
street with a guy who was fixing his bike pump.

On Thursday, we met with Andreas
Doerlitz, one of the sons of Schwester Doerlitz. We met in his music studio and
had a really good lesson with him about hope. We also had dinner with the other
Gera elders at their apartment that evening. All of Friday was spent dealing
with Zone Conference. We traveled bright and early to Nuernberg, where Elder
Hutchings is serving, and had meetings there pretty much the whole day. We got
back late that night. On Saturday, we had a very long planning session for the
week, and also did some work on the new GPS we got. On Sunday, we headed to
Erfurt for District Conference (since it is not a stake) and listened to some
really good talks from Pr. Schwartz and from Elder Schuetze, who was just
released from the area seventy I think. When we got back, we did some contacting
and had an interesting conversation with this old guy who said he made the
decision that he will not live eternally and now is Buddhist, and then we had a
good, short conversation with a woman about eternal families. In the evening, we
did a go-by on a member who had a birthday. When we were waiting for
our Strassenbahn to take us back, we had about a 15 minute wait, so we decided
to knock some doors. At the first door we went to, a lady came up behind us to
go into the building and said she knew who we were. Turns out she was a former
member who had taken her name off the records of the church. She set up an
appointment with us for tomorrow, and hopefully we can see a miracle
there.

Monday, April 15, 2013

We had a pretty decent week this week. On Monday, we were going to have an
appointment with Michael Peter, but he wasn't home. We saw him on the way back
to the city center, and he said that he had stuff to do and that we could come by on
Thursday. On Tuesday, we spent some time on the pedestrian zone giving out as
many cards as we could and inviting people to our weekly ward activity. We also
spent a bit of time writing our testimonies in Books of Mormon. Elder Schuetze,
who was just released from the area Seventy, visited us in a zone conference
last year and told us that no Book of Mormon should be given away without a
testimony, reading suggestions, and the contact info of the church/missionaries.
Since our area is new, we just had a box of blank Books of Mormon, so we had to
get on that.

On Wednesday, we went by on a man in a car dealership. We had
talked with him briefly on the street a couple weeks ago and he said we could
stop by his work. His name is Herr Hundt. He is a pretty cool guy. He is atheist
(go figure) and told us that he sees any church besides the Catholic and
Protestant churches as some sort of sect. I proclaimed to him that we were not a
sect, and that we were members of the same church that Jesus Christ set up, so
that was pretty cool. He said he would read the Book of Mormon, but that he
would most likely not be able to be converted because he doesn't believe in
things like that and only believes in things he can see and grab onto. Later on,
we had our weekly ward activity, which normally consists of a lesson about the
Book of Mormon, dinner, and then playing ping pong or other games.

The next day,
we headed to Jena for our zone training meeting, and afterwards I went on a
split with Elder Crosby in Werdau. They have bikes there and a ton of hilly
streets with narrow passageways. I am sure the Lord was watching out for me on
that split because there were several times when we had to hit pretty sharp
corners or go through really tight paths, but I didn't fall or hit anything. And
that was the first time I had ridden a bike in over a year, with a seat adjusted
for Elder Moore, who is over 6 feet tall, so yeah. I almost ate it a lot of
times on that bike, but somehow I managed to come out afterwards without
crashing. We visited this very old man in the branch there, and then went to a
bible study group at an Evangelisch church. It was very interesting. The head
guy in the study group could read and speak Hebrew and was explaining how God's
plan is made known in the Hebrew symbols just within the first verse of Genesis
1, and it all made sense and was really cool, but there was one thing missing:
the Spirit. It really made me appreciate how different it is to learn from the
wisdom of man and to learn from the Spirit. Even though I was very impressed by
this man and his understanding of Hebrew symbols (which in reality supported
most of the things we believe), I knew he had not learned what he had learned
though the Spirit of the Lord. I can see now even clearer than before why the
Bible has been changed so much and why there are so many churches who believe
they have the truth but deny the Spirit.

Anyway, the next day, we did some
service in a little town called Crimmitschau raking up and shoveling leaves in a
park there with a guy who worked for the city. It was pretty cool, and it was
nice to get in some service. Later on after a train ride back to Gera, we made
our plan for next week and did some studies and finding time. In the meantime on
this split, Elder Goodrich and Elder Moore had a lesson with Michael Peter, who
said he would come to church in May but would not accept a return appointment to
meet with us. Schade. Anyway, on Sunday, we had our fast and testimony meeting,
which was really cool. The son of the old man I had visited on my split in
Werdau was there (he is on the district council). I talked with him and told him
that I had visited his father a few days before. I gave my testimony a little
later during the meeting, and then this man ended the meeting with his
testimony. He said that he had talked with all of the missionaries in our branch
and was confident that we were all nice and good missionaries, at which point he
brought up my testimony and the story of me visiting his dad and how that meant
a lot to him that we had done that. It was really cool and the Spirit was really
strong, and I think it excited the members a little more to do missionary work.

Later on, we tried to visit this guy with a bunch of psychological problems that
we had met about a week ago, but he was not in the Clinic that he said he would
be in. So after that, we did some go-bys on some members and a
former investigator from the other missionaries' records. We did some dooring
after that in the northern part of town. And today, we have pretty much just
done the usual: study, shop, and do emails at the Kempe's. That about sums up
the week.

Monday, April 8, 2013

This last conference was great. We went to Werdau to watch it, one of the
neighboring areas in the mission. The talks were all really good, especially L.
Whitney Clayton's talk about marriage. It is pretty much the same in a
missionary companionship, just on a smaller scale of course, and I think Elder
Gautreaux is starting to rub off on me in that he would just talk about eternal
marriage all the time and how excited he was for it, so I really like hearing
those kinds of talks now. By the way, Elder Gautreaux is now engaged--it wasn't too long ago that we were companions in
Idar-Oberstein.

Well, it seems like forever since I had P-day considering it was on
Saturday the last time and not on the following Monday. We did have a birthday
party for me at the Kempes, and it was really fun. We all got Kinder Eggs, and
I got a really cool turtle figure. The Kempes also gave me a rice bag neck
pillow, which was great.

This week was pretty good but also really hectic. On Monday, we
spent most of the day at the Krause's house painting the son's (Alex)
apartment. We had lunch upstairs in the parent's apartment, and also had a short
lesson on the Atonement with Alex and his girlfriend, who is kind of taking the
lessons right now from the other elders. We then headed to Emily Jahr's
apartment, a less-active sister in the ward, who said she doesn't want to come
back to church until her kids can be here with her, and they are in Africa right
now, so who knows how long that will be. Then late at night we headed to Gotha
to sleep over with the elders there so we could catch our early train the next
morning to Frankfurt for the Golden/Trainer meeting. On Wednesday, we had lunch with Schwester
Doerlitz, which is always good. We later on went to help Alex Krause build a
desk for his apartment, and then rushed to Michael Peter's apartment. We taught
him, trying to help him find out how he could find out that there was a God by
reading the story of King Lamoni in the Book of Mormon together. It went pretty
well, but Michael tells us that these stories are nicely written, but that they
are just stories to him. He also had brought one of his friends along, a
religious woman named Ingrid, who has her own beliefs, but is willing to hear
our message. We left them with Alma 32 to read, and we are meeting again with
them tonight. At the end of the night, we went back to the Krause's for a
fireside, which went well.

On Thursday, our whole zone and all of the zone
leaders and the assistants to the President and Pres. Schwartz and his wife went
to Erfurt for a huge finding day in the East. It went really well, and I got to
work with one of the mission's zone leaders, Elder Billings, which was a lot of
fun. At one point, Pres. Schwartz came and joined a conversation that we were
having with this one guy, and it was really cool to see Pres. in action. If
every missionary in our mission had his missionary skills, there would be a lot
more baptisms in this mission. On Friday, we had a mini-split, meaning the two
companionships here in Gera switched companions for the day, which is something
Pres. Schwartz asked us to start doing every so often. I worked with Elder
Waterboehr, and we had kind of a lame day. Our appointment with a less-active
lady fell out, and we did some finding time and go bys without any success.
Saturday was also pretty slow until General Conference. We headed to Werdau in
the evening to catch the live stream of the Saturday Morning Session, then came
back yesterday morning to get the rest of the sessions except for the Sunday
Afternoon Session, which was too late for us and I still have not seen. And that
is pretty much the story of the week!

We got some pretty cool news this last week. We are now allowed to
email friends and members in addition to just the family, which is really nice
because letters are a real hassle for me. They just take so much longer than
emails and you don't have to pay for email. So anyone who wants to email me can get my email address from you and send me something.*

Well, that is it for the week. I hope that everyone has a good week. Love
you!

LG, Daniel

PS I know that BYU finals are coming up, so anyone who reads this and has
to take them, good luck!

Monday, April 1, 2013

This week has gone pretty well so far. On Tuesdays in Gera, there is
a ward activity in the evenings, so on Tuesday we went to church, had a lesson
about the Book of Mormon, ate dinner, and played a bunch of Ping Pong. On
Wednesday, we met with Schwester Dörlitz, an older woman in our ward who loves
the missionaries. She keeps track of all of the missionaries that have served in
Gera since 1990, and I was the 231st entry in her book. We also took some
cookies (that Sister Kempe made) to our neighbors just to introduce ourselves.
We share a floor with an old lady who has a lot of health problems, and she
pretty much loves us. Whenever she sees us, she always says "Oh, meine Elders!"
She is really nice. On Thursday, we were in Erfurt for pretty much the whole
day, and we had district meeting, interviews with Pr. Schwartz, and did some
finding time with our entire zone. Yesterday, we met with another sister in
the branch, Schw. Kretschmar.

We then went to a big park to do some contacting,
but we were struggling approaching people because it was a holiday and people
really looked like they would not want to be disturbed. After a dinner pause, we
went by on another sister in the branch. She was busy, so we set out a new
appointment with her for next week. We then knocked some doors in her area, and
pretty early on we were let in by someone. We rang the bell on a building, and
the person who lived on the top floor looked out the window and asked what we
wanted. We told him we were talking about the Atonement of Christ since it was
almost Easter, and he threw us down a key in an old cigarette box so we could
let ourselves in (most apartments have a button you can press to unlock the
building door without going down to open it yourself, and his didn't have one).
We went up and started talking to him. His name is Michael Peter. He is a pretty
nice guy and likes talking with us. He also is missing his right hand, which is
pretty interesting. He is an atheist, and he said it would be really hard for
him to believe anything we say, but he also did mention that he loved to read,
which is great for us. Hopefully he makes some progress. We have a return
appointment with him on Wednesday, so hopefully that will go well, too.

Besides that, we have just had P-day today. Early this morning we had an
Easter walk with the branch in these woods somewhere, and then we did our
shopping and up until I started emails, I have been playing chess with Elder
Kempe. It has been pretty good. Anyway, thanks for the birthday wishes, it
feels really weird that I will be 20 tomorrow! I hope everyone has a good
Easter, and that things go great this week! Love you!

LG, Daniel

Daniel and his new companion, Elder Goodrich from Orem, Utah, at the Kempe's.